Many commentators have expressed surprise about the extensive criticism directed against President Obama by liberals. During the new President’s third month in office, I pointed out how he had become the “Disappointer-In-Chief” – when he began to elicit groans from the likes of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. President Obama has continued on that trajectory ever since. More recently, Obama’s mishandling of the economic crisis resulted in a great cover story for New York Magazine by Frank Rich, entitled, “Obama’s Original Sin”. Although Frank Rich may have been a bit restrained in his criticism of Obama, Marshall Auerback didn’t pull any punches in an essay he wrote for the New Economic Perspectives website entitled, “Barack Obama: America’s First Tea Party President”:

Cutting public spending at this juncture is the last thing the US government should be doing. Yet this President is pushing for the largest possible cuts that he can on the Federal government debt. He is out-Hoovering the GOP on this issue. He is providing “leadership” of the sort which is infuriating his base, but should endear him to the Tea Party. This is “the big thing” for Barack Obama, as opposed to maximizing the potential of his fellow Americans by seeking to eliminate the scourge of unemployment. Instead, his big idea is to become the president who did what George Bush could not, or did not, dare to do: cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. What more could the Tea Party possibly want?

Glenn Greenwald of Salon has been a persistent critic of President Obama for quite a while. Back in September of 2010, I referenced one of Glenn Greenwald’s exceptive essays about Obama with this thought:

Glenn Greenwald devoted some space from his Salon piece to illustrate how President Obama seems to be continuing the agenda of President Bush. I was reminded of the quote from former Attorney General John Ashcroft in an article written by Jane Mayer for The New Yorker. When discussing how he expected the Obama Presidency would differ from the Presidency of his former boss, George W. Bush, Ashcroft said:

“How will he be different? The main difference is going to be that he spells his name ‘O-b-a-m-a,’ not ‘B-u-s-h.’ ”

John Ashcroft’s prescient remark could not have been more accurate. Who else could have foreseen that the Obama Presidency would eventually be correlated with that of President George W. Bush? Although it may have seemed like a preposterous notion at the time, it’s now beginning to make more sense, thanks to a very interesting piece I read at the Truthdig website entitled, “If McCain Had Won” by Fred Branfman. Branfman began with a list of “catastrophes” we would have seen from a McCain administration, followed by this comment:

Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more, however, than the fact that Democratic President Barack Obama has undertaken all of these actions and, even more significantly, left the Democratic Party far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected.

More important, the sentence immediately following that remark deserves special attention because it forms the crux of Branfman’s analysis:

Few issues are more important than seeing behind the screen of a myth-making mass media, and understanding what this demonstrates about how power in America really works – and what needs to be done to change it.

From there, Branfman went on to explain how and why McCain would have made the same decisions and enacted the same policies as Obama. Beyond that, Branfman explained why Obama ended up doing things exactly as McCain would have:

Furious debate rages among Obama’s Democratic critics today on why he has largely governed on the big issues as John McCain would have done. Some believe he retains his principles but has been forced to compromise by political realities. Others are convinced he was a manipulative politico who lacked any real convictions in the first place.

But there is a far more likely – and disturbing – possibility. Based on those who knew him and his books, there is little reason to doubt that the pre-presidential Obama was a college professor-type who shared the belief system of his liberalish set …

* * *

Upon taking office, however, Obama – whatever his belief system at that point – found that he was unable to accomplish these goals for one basic reason: The president of the United States is far less powerful than media myth portrays. Domestic power really is in the hands of economic elites and their lobbyists, and foreign policy really is controlled by U.S. executive branch national security managers and a “military-industrial complex.”

The ugly truth strikes again! The seemingly “all-powerful” President of the United States is nothing more than a tool of the plutocracy. It doesn’t matter whether the White House is occupied by a Democrat or a Republican – the policies (domestic, foreign, economic, etc.) will always be the same – because the people calling the shots are always the same plutocrats who control those “too big to fail” banks, the military industry and big pharma. As Branfman put it:

. . . anyone who becomes president has little choice but to serve the institutional interests of a profoundly amoral and violent executive branch and the corporations behind them.

Perhaps in response to the oft-cited criticism that “if you’re not part of the solution – you’re part of the problem”, Fred Branfman has offered us a proposal that could send us on the way to changing this intolerable status quo:

But however important the 2012 election, far more energy needs to be devoted to building mass organizations that challenge elite power and develop the kinds of policies – including massive investment in a “clean energy economic revolution,” a carbon tax and other tough measures to stave off climate change, regulating and breaking up the financial sector, cost-effective entitlements like single-payer health insurance, and public financing of primary and general elections – which alone can save America and its democracy in the painful decade to come.

Wait a minute! Didn’t Obama already promise us all of that stuff?

Perhaps the only way to achieve those goals is by voting for Independent political candidates, who are not beholden to the Republi-cratic Corporatist Party or its financiers. When the mainstream media go out of their way to pretend as though a particular candidate does not exist – you might want to give serious consideration to voting for that person. When the media try to “disappear” a candidate by “hiding” that person “in plain sight”, they could be inadvertently providing the best type of endorsement imaginable.

The same level of energy that brought Obama to the White House could be used to bring us our first Independent President. All we need is a candidate.

No Labels is a 501(c)(4) social welfare advocacy organization created to provide a voice for America’s vital center, where ideas are judged on their merits, a position which is underrepresented in our current politics. No Labels provides a forum and community for Americans of all political backgrounds interested in seeing the nation move not left, not right, but forward. No Labels encourages all public officials to prioritize the national interest over party interest, and to cease acting on behalf of narrow, if vocal, special interests on the far right or left.

As a political centrist, I found most of what I read at the No Labels website appealing enough, although I disagreed with a bit of it. First of all, the group would have been more aptly-named, “No Polarization” since they aren’t really opposed to labels, as they explained:

We are never asking people to give up their labels, only put them aside to do what’s best for America.

Besides – I enjoy using labels to describe people. Some of my favorite labels include: corporatist, plutocrat, oligarch and tool. Another statement on the No Labels website with which I disagreed was the following remark, from their Statement of Purpose:

We can’t seem to break our addiction to foreign oil.

I would suggest: “We can’t seem to break our addiction to carbon-based energy sources.” There is no such thing as “foreign oil”. The so-called, “American” oil companies are all incorporated in the Cayman Islands and none of them pay income taxes to our government. All of our oil comes from multinational corporations and it is commingled with “Muslim oil” and “Venezuelan Communist oil” at storage depots. If the people from No Labels insist on treating us as idiots in the same manner as the two major political parties, they will deservedly fail in their mission.

I was particularly amused by the fact that so many people expressed outrage about the founding of No Labels. The new organization managed to draw plenty of ire from an assortment of commentators during the past week and it made for some fun reading. One of the “Founding Leaders” of No Labels is John Avlon of the Huffington Post. He recently wrote this essay in response to spleen-venting by Rush Limbaugh on the right and Keith Olbermann on the left – both of whom expressed displeasure with the inception of the new association:

“If we do this right, we can discredit this whole mind-set of the ‘moderate center’ being the defining group in American politics,” said Rush. “Because this No Labels group is going to end up illustrating what a fraudulent idea that whole concept of, ‘There are people who decide issue by issue. On the left they like certain things, on the right they like certain things.’ ”

So Rush believes that there are no principled Americans who decide what they believe on different policies issue-by-issue. For someone who talks about freedom a lot, he doesn’t have much faith in free will or free-thinking. He doesn’t believe that Americans — especially independent voters — can consider themselves fiscally conservative but socially liberal. You either walk in lockstep as a social conservative and fiscal conservative or you are a ‘hard-core liberal’ — libertarians, apparently, need not apply.

* * *

Keith Olbermann named No Labels one of the “worst persons in the world” last night (a badge of honor he gave to me earlier this year). He called us “wolves in sheep’s clothing,” and “a bunch of fraudulent conservative Democrats pretending to be moderates and a bunch of fraudulent Republicans pretending to be independents.” Again, there’s the impulse to divide and deny the legitimacy of anyone who doesn’t conform to a hyper-partisan view of politics.

Conservative columnist George Will provided this amusing bit of speculation that the entire effort might simply be a pretext for Michael Bloomberg’s Presidential ambitions:

Often in the year before the year before the year divisible by four, a few political people theatrically recoil from partisanship. Recently, this ritual has involved speculation about whether New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg might squander a few of his billions to improve America by failing to be elected president.

Oh, snap! Good one, George!

The strangest reaction to the kick-off of No Labels came from Frank Rich of The New York Times. The relevant portions of Mr. Rich’s rant seemed to be based on the theme that the Republican-dominated 112th Congress will be intransigent and therefore, President Obama along with his fellow Democrats, must fight intransigence with intransigence. This formula for gridlock would ultimately prove more harmful to Democrats than Republicans.

The Frank Rich diatribe was particularly bizarre because it rambled all over the place, with rants about people and subjects having nothing to do with No Labels. Peter Orszag has no connection to No Labels. So, why did Frank Rich go off on the wild tangent about Orszag, Citigroup and Scott Brown’s contributions from the financial sector as though any of them might have had something to do with No Labels? Forget about what John Avlon told you concerning Keith Olberman’s putting No Labels on his “worst persons in the world” list. According to Frank Rich, the entire No Labels effort is actually a “a promotional hobby horse for MSNBC”. It gets weirder: Rich believes that because a political consultant (Mark McKinnon) and a fund-raiser (Nancy Jacobson) are “prime movers” for No Labels . . . therefore “No Labels itself is another manifestation” of the syndrome wherein “both parties are bought off by special interests who game the system and stack it against the rest of us.” At this point, the only factoid I can find to support that allegation is the inclusion of the term “foreign oil” in the group’s Statement of Purpose. So, I’ll keep an open mind. Besides, I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as well as Jesse Ventura’s television program with the same name. Nevertheless, it becomes difficult to stick with Frank Rich’s theory that by failing to seek re-election as Senator of Indiana, Evan Bayh deliberately “facilitated the election of a high-powered corporate lobbyist, Dan Coats, as his Republican successor”. The fact that Bayh’s father, former Senator Birch Bayh, is a lobbyist is interposed to emphasize the likelihood that Evan will also become a lobbyist. Is this discussion being offered to explain that Evan Bayh “stepped aside” to allow Dan Coats to become Senator because Bayh has a genetic pre-disposition to the “Lobbyist Code of Dishonor”? If so, in what manner does this impact No Labels? Guilt by association?

The animosity generated by this group’s stand against what it calls “hyper-partisanship” demonstrates that the opponents of No Labels are advocates of hyper-partisanship. In the days ahead, it will be interesting to see who else speaks out to “give acrimony a chance”.

President Obama must feel relieved by the cartoonish attacks against him by the likes of Rep. Michelle Bachmann and Fox News character, Sean Hannity. Bachmann’s accusations that Obama is planning “re-education camps” for young people surely brought some comic relief to the new President. Hannity must have caused some thunderous laughter in the White House with his claim that during a speech the President gave in Strasbourg, France, we saw examples of how “Obama attacks America”. These denigration attempts were likely received as a welcome break from criticism being voiced by commentators who are usually supportive of the Obama administration. Take Keith Olbermann for example. He has not been holding back on expressing outrage over the Obama administration’s claim that the Patriot Act provides sovereign immunity to the federal government in civil lawsuits brought by victims of illegal wiretapping conducted by the Bush administration. Another example of a disillusioned Obama supporter is MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who has been fretting over the President’s plan to up the stakes for success in Afghanistan by increasing our troop commitment there and settling in to fight the good fight for as long as it takes.

Nothing has broken the spirits of Obama supporters more than his administration’s latest bank bailout scheme — a/k/a the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP or “pee-pip”). Although Treasury Secretary “Turbo” Tim Geithner has been the guy selling this plan to Congress and the public, the “man behind the curtain” who likely hatched this scam is Larry Summers. Summers is the economist whom Obama named director of the National Economic Council. At the time of that appointment, many commentators expressed dismay, since Summers, as Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, supported repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. It is widely accepted that the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act helped bring about the subprime mortgage crisis and our current economic meltdown. On the November 25, 2008 broadcast of the program, Democracy Now, author Naomi Klein made the following remark about Obama’s appointment of Summers: “I think this is really troubling.” She was right. It was recently reported by Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times that Summers earned more than $5 million last year from the hedge fund, D. E. Shaw and collected $2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street companies that received government bailout money. Many economists are now voicing opinions that the Geithner-Summers Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) is “really troubling”, as well. Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz have been vocal critics of this plan. As James Quinn reported for London’s Telegraph: Professor Stiglitz said that the plan is “very flawed” and “amounts to robbery of the American people.”

Obama supporter George Soros, the billionaire financier and hedge fund manager, had this to say to Saijel Kishan and Kathleen Hays of Bloomberg News about Obama’s performance so far:

“He’s done very well in every area, except in dealing with the recapitalization of the banks and the restructuring of the mortgage market,” said Soros, who has published an updated paperback version of his book “The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means” (Scribe Publications, 2009). “Unfortunately, there’s just a little bit too much continuity with the previous administration.”

The usually Obama-friendly Huffington Post has run a number of critical pieces addressing the Geithner – Summers plan. Sam Stein pointed out how the plan is “facing a new round of withering criticism from economists”:

These critiques have produced a Washington rarity: the re-sparking of a debate that, in the wake of positive reviews from Wall Street, had largely subsided. Just as Geithner seemed to be finding his political footing, the spotlight has been placed right back on his cornerstone proposal, with critics calling into question both his projections and past testimony on the matter.

Jeffrey Sachs, an Economics professor at Columbia University, wrote a follow-up article for The Huffington Post on April 8, affirming earlier criticisms leveled against the bailout proposal with the added realization that “the situation is even potentially more disastrous” than previously described:

Insiders can easily game the system created by Geithner and Summers to cost up to a trillion dollars or more to the taxpayers.

Zachary Goldfarb of The Washington Post took a closer look at Treasury Secretary Geithner’s testimony before Congress last month, to ascertain the viability of some of the proposals Geithner mentioned at that hearing:

The Obama administration’s plan for a sweeping expansion of financial regulations could have unintended consequences that increase the very hazards that these changes are meant to prevent.

Financial experts say the perception that the government will backstop certain losses will actually encourage some firms to take on even greater risks and grow perilously large. While some financial instruments will come under tighter control, others will remain only loosely regulated, creating what some experts say are new loopholes. Still others say the regulation could drive money into questionable investments, shadowy new markets and lightly regulated corners of the globe.

If President Obama does not change course and deviate from the Geithner-Summers plan before it’s too late, his legacy will be a ten-year recession rather than a two year recession without the PPIP. Worse yet, the toughest criticism and the most pressure against his administration are coming from people he has considered his supporters. At least he has the people at Fox News to provide some laughable “decoy” reports to keep his hard-core adversaries otherwise occupied.

It was the opportunity for a “game-changing move” in the 2008 Presidential campaign. Just as John McCain was dropping back in the polls, providing Barack Obama the chance to “close the deal” even more decisively than he did with Hillary Clinton, McCain missed the opportunity to turn the game around. Last week, he arrived in Washington (after the pseudo-suspension of his campaign) on a mission to save us all from the crisis declared by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. After McCain arrived, he found a number of both Republican and Democratic members of the House of Representatives opposed to the revised, 110-page, economic “bailout bill” (the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008). At that point in time, McCain had the opportunity to break with the unpopular Bush Administration and band together with the 133 Republican and 95 Democratic House members (who eventually voted against the bill) to form a “coalition of mavericks” (oxymoron, non-sequitur or both?) resisting this bailout of the big banks and other “fat cats” on Wall Street. He didn’t. He chose instead, to copy whatever Barack Obama was doing. Besides, his move dovetailed well with the pseudo-“bipartisan” duet he had been playing, throughout the entire campaign, with Joe “The Tool” Lieberman. Had McCain stood with those 133 young Republican members of the House and the 95 Democrats (many of whom consider themselves conservative, “Blue Dog” Democrats) he could have re-ignited his flatulent campaign. (Is it really safe to do that? — Let’s ask Johnny Knoxville.)

Howard Fineman provided an interesting retrospective of this phase in the evolution the economic “bailout bill” at the Newsweek website on September 30:

The Paulson Plan is not great. Some two hundred academic economists have ridiculed it, and so have the House Republicans, by a 2-1 margin. Public opinion (and not just the angry phone callers) is turning against the measure—to the extent that anybody understands it.

But the consensus is that Washington has to do something, and that the current version is far better than what the lawmakers started with.

McCain made a show of returning to Washington to try to jam the original measure through. He deserves credit for the instinct. An old Navy motto is: Don’t just stand there, DO something! That is McCain to the core, and so much the better for it.

But when he got to town, he realized something that no one had bothered to tell him, apparently: the grassroots of his own party (the grassroots that has never really trusted him) hated the Paulson Plan. They weren’t about to support it and risk their own necks. McCain worked the phones, but fell back in the ranks.

When the second revision of this bill (at over 400 pages) finally made it to the Senate floor for the vote on Wednesday, October 1, there were 9 Democrats, 15 Republicans and Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, voting against it. McCain again missed the opportunity for a truly bipartisan resistance to this measure. Such an act would have demonstrated genuine leadership. He could have rejoined his old buddy, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, as well as Florida Democrat Bill Nelson and rising Democratic star, Maria Cantwell from the State of Washington, all of whom voted against this measure. Such a move would have emboldened resistance to the “bailout bill” in the House of Representatives, where the term of office lasts only two years. (The short term results in greater accountability to American voters, who are believed to have notoriously short memory spans.)

Is this bill really necessary? On the October 1 edition of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Paul Krugman, Economics Professor at Princeton University, admitted that:

… it will be relatively ineffective, although rejecting it will cause a big run on the system. Then we will come back and do it right in January or February …

When Keith Olbermann asked Krugman about the likelihood that nothing consequential would happen if this bill did not pass, Krugman responded by saying that such possibilities have “shrunk in the past week”. Krugman went on to claim that “the credit crunch has started to hit Main Street”, using, as an example, the rumor that: “McDonald’s has started to cut credit to its franchisees.” McDonald’s has issued a press release stating that this was not the case. What is really happening is that the banks are acting like spoiled children, holding their breath until the government gives them what they want, using the threat of unavailable credit as a gun to the head of Congress.

Public opposition to this bailout was best summed up by Peggy Noonan, when she appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on October 1:

But we are in a real economic crisis and the American political establishment said we must do A, B and C to deal with it and the American people … said: “No. We don’t trust you to handle this. We don’t trust you to do the right thing.”

John McCain had the opportunity to stand with those people, as well as the 133 House Republicans and 15 Senate Republicans, to do “the right thing”. He decided to forego that opportunity. Barack Obama said, on the Senate floor Wednesday, that it was not worth risking the American economy and the world economy by challenging this bill. John McCain decided that it was not worth risking his Presidential campaign on such a challenge. That’s too bad for him. The gamble probably would have paid off.

Like many critics of Hillary Clinton’s performance during this Primary season, I was very skeptical about whether she would deliver a whole-hearted endorsement of Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention. My reaction to her speech on Tuesday night was similar to what I heard from the voices in my TV. My first exclamation at the close of her speech, was: “Out of the park and 300 feet above Waveland Avenue, all the way across!” Keith Olbermann’s voice then came out of the TV, saying: “Grand Slam!” repeatedly. After a minute, David Gregory asked New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to critique the speech. Richardson described it as “a 500-foot home run”.

After hearing her speech, I felt motivated to apologize for publicly doubting her loyalty to the Democratic Party. She really did “deliver the goods” by giving what was, perhaps, her best speech on the campaign stump. Although many of us were surprised by the substance of her speech, I was particularly impressed by her delivery. Hillary had always addressed her audiences with Lieberman-esque stiffness. Imagine someone saying “let us go forward” with a groaning, insincere tone for the 10,000th time. That was the way Hillary used to speak. In defeat, she really did find her voice. Although she claimed that happened after her “close call” in New Hampshire, I believe that deep in her heart, she must have known she would not really find her voice until she would be completely vanquished in this campaign. Once the weight of the world was (literally) lifted off her shoulders, she was able to freely and candidly express herself to the voters. She needs to review the videos of this speech to reinforce her better public speaking skills, as an example of “how it is done properly”. The look in Bill’s eyes told the story: Hillary had finally cultivated her public speaking skills to the level where they belong. Right on the heels of the Summer Olympics, where we saw so many American women win so many medals, we saw an American woman who ran for the Presidency, delivering a solid performance for Team U.S.A. I’m sure the audience saw it this way and it was reflected in the sports metaphors used by so many, expressing their reactions to this speech.

I was glad to see the individuals mentioned in my “Women To Watch” article (June 19) behind the podium during the first two days of this Convention. At the Republican Convention, we will not see this many women speaking, unless they run some sort of “Abortion Confessional” feature. (John Waters would be the perfect director for such a piece.)

Bill Clinton’s only challenge at this Convention was to show that he still has “the old magic”. It was not unlike an extended, Keith Richards guitar solo at a Rolling Stones concert. All he had to do was go out and give the audience a little of the old … “little of the old”. It worked. Bill was back with his unique ability to enrapture a crowd. The audience responded warmly to him.

By this point in the Democratic Convention, no speaker had yet really slaughtered John McCain or the Republicans to the extent many Democrats had anticipated. Patrick Buchanan of MSNBC voiced his criticism that McCain had been “getting a free ride” at this Convention. His remark drew a round of applause from the largely-Democratic, outdoor crowd at Union Station in Denver.

Finally, Joe Biden stepped up to serve the audience some petit filet mignon. Democrats aren’t big on red meat. They’re mostly a “fish” crowd, preferring high levels of mercury over the risk of colon cancer. The avoidance of “red meat” had been obvious all week. It was beginning to show. Had the arugula vegans taken over Obama’s campaign once and for all? Biden gave the Convention program just what it needed: some hardball pitches at McCain’s failed foreign policy positions, contrasted with Obama’s foreign policy ideas, some of which were ratified by the Bush Administration even after McCain had dissed them as nonsense.

For his part, Obama educated his Republican critics about the characterization of him as a “celebrity”. They just can’t get a handle on it. On Wednesday night, Obama made it clear that he is not just a celebrity … He’s an “M.C.” (This means “master of ceremonies” to all of us still using SPF 30 sunscreen in late August.) “M.C. Barack” had things under control by the end of Wednesday night. Let’s see how he does on Thursday.

As mid-August approaches, the Hillarologists are preparing to descend upon Denver to vent their spleens at the Democratic Convention. We’ve seen videos of them at backyard parties, cheering for their fallen hero, and shouting out for … uhh … catharsis? As their hearts filled with rage, visions of sexists danced in their heads: the usual big-mouths who weren’t used to restraining themselves while making on-air comments. Most of the liberally-inclined men I know, couldn’t understand the charges of sexism in media coverage of the Presidential campaign, as alleged by Clinton’s supporters. That’s because these men don’t watch Fox News or the likes of Glenn Beck. Had they watched Keith Olbermann’s Countdown program a while back, they would have been treated to a sampling of some ugly, sexist remarks, as rebroadcast to an audience who, for the most part, tended to avoid the White House echo chamber.

Suddenly, Hillary’s female activists have a big distraction. John Edwards (age 55) has now admitted to having an affair with a dilettante filmmaker named Rielle Hunter (age 44). Edwards has admitted to having the affair that began after his wife, Elizabeth (now age 58), had been diagnosed with cancer. To the Hillarologists, the Edwards caper sounded all too familiar. It was yet another case of “throw your first wife under the bus” syndrome, with the added feature of doing so while she is in the throes of a medical crisis. The Clinton supporters must have been reminded of a similar situation involving another candidate in the 2008 Presidential campaign: John McCain.

Sharon Churcher provided an informative history of McCain’s first marriage in the June 8 issue of Britain’s Daily Mail. Her article described how McCain (who turns 72 at the end of this month) married the sexy swimwear model named Carol Shepp in 1965. Carol is only two years younger than John. Carol had been previously married to one of McCain’s Annapolis classmates, by whom she had two sons: Douglas and Andrew. When McCain married Carol, he adopted her sons. During the Christmas season of 1969, while McCain was a prisoner in Viet Nam, Carol was driving to a friend’s house and experienced a horrible automobile accident. A few hours after the accident, she was found next to the wreckage of her car, having been thrown through the windshield. Churcher’s article went on to point out that after McCain’s release from the “Hanoi Hilton” and upon his reunion with Carol in 1973, he first learned of Carol’s injuries. She was no longer the tall model he remembered. Her doctors “had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone in her legs, taking with it her tall, willowy figure” as Churcher explained.

The Daily Mail article mentioned a man named Ted Sampley, who fought with the Special Forces in Viet Nam. Mr Sampley was quoted as saying:

“When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it.”

“Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better.”

The article included the following quote from Carol about McCain’s reason for leaving her:

My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens … it just does.

The disgruntled Hillarologists must be aware of the pattern here: opportunistic male politician strays from his first wife after she sustains a physical setback. The 2008 Presidential campaign brought us two candidates with the same modus operandi. The fact that they are from different parties shouldn’t exclude John Edwards as a running mate for John McCain. After all, non-Republican Joe “The Tool” Lieberman has been vying for that spot for over a year.

At a fundraiser in Detroit on July 18, John McCain revealed that Barack Obama would be traveling to Iraq and Afghanistan on the weekend of the July 19-20. For some reason, McCain saw fit to make this indiscrete comment:

I believe that either today or tomorrow, I am not privy to his schedule, Senator Obama will be landing in Iraq with some other Senators. There will be a Congressional delegation – and I am sure that Senator Obama is going to arrive in Baghdad in a much, much, safer and secure environment than the one that he would have encountered before we started the siege.

Of course, McCain was more than willing to “back up” his claim that Iraq is now safer — with other people’s lives at stake on that bet. Included in that delegation was McCain’s fellow Viet Nam War veteran, Senator Chuck Hagel. Senator Hagel is also a Republican (for now) and a true bipartisan (unlike McCain’s traveling companion: Joe “The Tool” Lieberman).

McCain knows damned well that his trips to Iraq, as well as those of his mentor, George W. Bush, were kept in secrecy until they were concluded. Nevertheless, McCain chose to disclose the Obama – Hagel trip to Iraq, and risk the lives of his opponent and his fellow Viet Nam War veteran, to potentially fatal consequences. Why he would have done this, crossed the minds of people other than you and me. Needless to say, I was outraged by McCain’s security breach. It reminded me of the similarly traitorous “outing” of Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA Case Officer by the Bush Administration, to advance its case for the invasion of Iraq.

On July 18, Richard Wolffe of Newsweek appeared on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”. During that interview, this exchange took place:

Olbermann: About this Obama trip, two questions about the mechanics: 1) Why the secrecy about it? and 2) If there is a good reason for that secrecy, why would is Senator McCain try to give away the secret today in Michigan?

Wolffe: The reason for the secrecy is security, of course, and we in the media have been very careful about what we are putting out there. You know – security of these trips – and I went with President Bush to Iraq. Security is tight for a reason. So it is remarkable that a member of Congress would even speculate that way. Why he did that, I can’t really be sure, but obviously they’re trying to backtrack now.

I have a guess: Perhaps McCain is just a “snitch” by nature. Maybe it’s time to look into the rumors from his 2000 Presidential campaign, supporting the notion that McCain made it back from the Hanoi Hilton by “ratting out” his fellow Americans. The fact that he tried to “rat-out” his fellow Viet Nam veteran, Chuck Hagel, on this trip to Iraq could lend some credence to those claims. His motives for disclosing the details of this trip were apparently twofold: Scare Obama, Hagel and the others from that delegation, so they would stay away from Iraq and Afghanistan. A possible second motive might have been to make sure they would not live to brag about this adventure to Iraq, should they actually undertake it.

At an earlier news conference that morning, McCain claimed that:

He (Obama) would be going to a very different Iraq, if we had done what he wanted to do.

In other words, McRat claimed that Iraq would be much different now than it would have been if the United States had been following Obama’s plan for resolving that war. In harsh contrast to that lie, we have the July 19 report from Jake Tapper of ABC News:

The White House this afternoon accidentally sent to its extensive distribution list a Reuters story headlined “Iraqi PM Backs Obama Troop Exit Plan – magazine.”

The story relayed how Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the German magazine Der Spiegel that he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months … “U.S. Presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,” the prime minister said.

The White House employee had intended to send the article to an internal distribution list, ABC News’ Martha Raddatz reports, but hit the wrong button.

The misfire comes at an odd time for Bush foreign policy, at a time when Obama’s campaign alleges the President is moving closer toward Obama’s recommendations about international relations — sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, discussing a “general time horizon” for U.S. troop withdrawal and launching talks with Iran.

Oops! It looks as though the handlers for McRat’s own mentor are admitting that Iraq agrees to Obama’s plan for an exit strategy in Iraq and nobody told McRat.

Well … Obama, Hagel and the network news anchors didn’t “chicken out”. Beyond that, it looks like they will live to come back here and put McRat where he belongs: caught in his own McTrap.

Comments Off on “My Oath Is To The Constitution, Not To The President”

July 3, 2008

David Iglesias is making the talk show circuit, promoting his recent book: In Justice. The book provides an insider’s account of the scandal involving the politicization of the Justice Department under the Administration of non-attorneys George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. As I have said before, these two men have little regard for our Constitution because they know little about it and they have contempt for our courts because they know almost nothing about the law or the concepts of justice and due process. Bush/Cheney made a point of having culls run Justice: John Ashcroft, who (surprisingly) to his credit, was not trusted by them to authorize their FISA bypass, so they tried to have him authorize it while he was in the hospital, under sedation. Once Alberto Gonzalez became Attorney General, we had someone in charge of the Justice Department, who was even more subservient to the whims of non-attorneys Bush and Cheney. This resulted in what history will view as the most disgraceful abuse of the Justice Department as Soviet-style enforcers of political allegiance to the party-in-charge. David Iglesias and at least six other important federal prosecutors, who had devoted their careers to fighting organized crime, terrorism and (oops!) corporate fraud, were summarily terminated by Bush-Cheney for failure to align their missions with the political vendettas of this administration. The title Iglesias chose for his book was an obvious reference to the widespread opinion that the Bush Administration had changed the Justice Department to the Injustice Department.

David Iglesias explained to Tavis Smiley that an underlying theme throughout his book was that as a federal prosecutor, he understood his oath of office as to support the Constitution of the United States, despite the Bush Administration’s mandate that a prosecutor’s highest obligation was to support the President.

This theme is particularly timely in light of the recent dispute arising from the appearance of retired General Wesley Clark on the CBS News program, “Face The Nation” on June 29. During that conversation, Wesley Clark, in his vanity, forgot that it was actually Barack Obama running as the Democratic Party’s candidate for President, rather than himself. Clark expressed a rationale that only Commanding Officers, such as himself, had the type of military experience to qualify one for the Presidency. He tactlessly contrasted this with the experience of John McCain, who was shot down as a fighter pilot and was held for years as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton. When asked by Dan Abrams on MSNBC’s “The Verdict”, to explain his minimization of McCain’s sacrifice, Clark again reinforced his position that only Commanding Officers, such as himself, had the type of military experience to be qualified for the Presidency. The McCain camp made the most they could of this denigration of the Republican candidate’s service. Barack Obama found it necessary to distance himself from Clark’s comments on this subject.

The McCain camp then targeted Virginia Senator Jim Webb, for his remarks to Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s “Countdown” show of June 30. During that interview, Webb pointed out that:

We need to make sure that we take politics out of service. People don’t serve their country for political issues and John McCain is my longtime friend and if there is one area I would ask him to calm down on it is: don’t be standing up and uttering your political views and implying that all the people in the military support them because they don’t, any more than when the Democrats had political issues during the Vietnam war. Let’s get politics out of the military, take care of our military people and have our political arguments in other areas.

McCain’s claim was that this was another attack on his service in the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, we can see that Webb was attempting to distinguish a soldier’s obligation to the President (or in this case, a Presidential candidate) from a soldier’s obligation to defend our Constitution. The oath of enlistment for people serving in the military is as follows:

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (So help me God.)

Although military personnel are bound by their oath to follow the orders of the President, in accordance with regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, their primary duty is to support and defend the Constitution. When McCain takes for granted that those serving in the military will support his entire political agenda, he is mistaken. Their oath does not require it, nor could he enforce such compliance if elected President.

What is actually going on with all of this is that the Obama camp is out to “level the playing field” with respect to Obama’s lack of military experience. McCain’s delusion that he can speak for all the troops and that they are aligned with his entire political agenda is the “Achilles heel” where the Democrats are directing their fire to achieve their goal. “McCain doesn’t speak for all the troops” is the argument that will pay off when the pollsters focus on the Presidential choices of those in uniform.

As an aside, it’s only fitting that at a time so close to the day we celebrate our Independence, we can celebrate the rescue of former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt from the FARC rebels. My Colombian friends and I thought she had been killed several years ago. Let’s all make a toast to Ingrid when we think about freedom this year!

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TheCenterLane.com offers opinion, news and commentary on politics, the economy, finance and other random events that either find their way into the news or are ignored by the news reporting business. As the name suggests, our focus will be on what seems to be happening in The Center Lane of American politics and what the view from the Center reveals about the events in the left and right lanes. Your Host, John T. Burke, Jr., earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College with a double major in Speech Communications and Philosophy. He earned his law degree (Juris Doctor) from the Illinois Institute of Technology / Chicago-Kent College of Law.